The bill package passed last night by Congress—and immediately signed into law by President Donald Trump—includes language that will prohibit the sale of all intoxicating hemp-derived products.
The hemp ban will take effect in 365 days, unless opponents are able to muster support for legislation that would amend it.
The primary purpose of the bill package was to pass a continuing resolution (CR) to provide temporary funding for federal agencies, allowing the government to reopen after a 43-day shutdown. But the package also included the 2026 agricultural appropriations bill, into which the hemp language was inserted by Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell.
Delta 8 and THCA will be Schedule 1 drugs
The ag bill amends the 2018 Farm Bill language to change the definition of legal hemp products. Currently, a hemp product is considered legal if it contains less than 0.3 percent delta 9 THC on a dry weight basis. When the new law takes effect, the language will change to outlaw any product containing more than 0.4 milligrams per container of any kind of THC (not just delta 9) or other intoxicating cannabinoids.
If Congress takes no further action, all popular hemp-based cannabinoids will be federally prohibited, including delta 8 THC, HHC, delta 10, CBN, and THCP. The law will also ban THCA, and any cannabinoids that are synthesized or manufactured outside of the cannabis plant or not capable of being naturally produced by the plant.
Those substances would all be federally reclassified as Schedule 1 narcotics, and subject to enforcement by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) and other federal police agencies.
Even though the bill doesn’t outlaw CBD (cannabidiol), cannabis attorney Rod Kight says the CBD market will be destroyed too.
“First,” writes Kight, “most CBD products contain more than 0.4 milligrams of THC. Second, and as I have previously discussed at length, this provision criminalizes the manufacturing of CBD isolate products since the process of isolating CBD necessarily results in excess ‘waste-stream’ THC exceeding 0.3%.”
A year to fix the problem
Hemp trade group the U.S. Hemp Roundtable says the bill will wipe out 95 percent of the $28.4 billion industry that has become established since hemp was legalized by the 2018 Farm Bill.
The hemp ban was supported by a “bootleggers and Baptists” coalition that included both marijuana prohibitionists and large segments of the state-regulated marijuana industry.
Hemp-based cannabinoids—typically sold online or in gas stations and convenience and grocery stores—are seen by regulated marijuana businesses as unwelcome competition.
Opponents of the bill intend to introduce legislation to overturn the outright ban before it takes effect Nov. 12, 2026.